say, that the single circumstance of Bonaparte's father marrying as he did has more or less affected almost every individual in Europe, as well as a numerous multitude in the other quarters of the globe.

We see from the preceding glance, what an important share an individual may have in modifying the course of events, and how his influence may extend, in some way or other, through the minutest ramifications of society. Yet amidst all this influence, we may also perceive the operation of general causes; of those principles of the mind common to all individuals, and of the physical circumstances by which they are surrounded. The individual character itself, indeed, partly receives its tone and properties from general causes, and much of the re-action which it exerts may be, in an indirect sense, ascribed to them. Thus, although the marriage of Bonaparte's father and mother, the connection of those particular persons, was the cause of his existence and of

many of the peculiarities by which he was distinguished, yet his character and conduct were in no small degree moulded by the spirit of the age. There are many general causes, it is obvious, which would have operated although any given person had never come into the world. There is a certain progress or course of affairs that holds on, amidst all the various impressions, the checks and the impulses, which it receives from individual character. If Bonaparte had never existed the nations of the earth would, in all likelihood, have been in much the same relative situation as they are, and, at all events, they would have made similar advances in political knowledge. violence of the French Revolution would probably have been directed by some other ambitious leader against the states of Europe; it might have lasted nearly the same time, and subsided in a similar way. But although the general result might have been in many respects similar, the train of political events

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would have been altogether different; there would have been quite a different mass of materials for the future historian.

The remark may be extended, with still more certainty, to almost all the arts and sciences. Composed as their history necessarily is of the achievements of individuals, their advancement is the result of general causes, and independent in a certain sense on individual character. The inventions of printing and gunpowder, the discovery of the virtues of the loadstone, and even the inductive logic of Bacon, were sure to mark the progress of human affairs, and were not owing to the mere personal qualities, nor necessarily bound to the destiny of those who promulgated them to the world. The discoveries of modern astronomy would doubtless have been ultimately attained, although such a person as Sir Isaac Newton had never seen the light; but they would not have been attained in the same way, nor perhaps at the same period. The science, it is probable,

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would have been extremely dissimilar in the detail, in the rapidity of its progress, and the order of its discoveries, while there is every reason to think it would have been much the same in its final result.

ESSAY

ON

THE VICISSITUDES OF LIFE.

ALTHOUGH the events of our lives appear in the retrospect naturally enough connected with each other, yet if we compare two widely distant periods of the past, we shall often find them so discordant as to excite our surprise that the same being should have been placed in circumstances so essentially dissimilar. And if we could foresee some of the circumstances of our

future lives, it would frequently appear quite out of the limits of possibility that we should be brought into them. Our present state would seem so full of insurmountable obstacles to such a change, that we could not form a